


Carry You Home

by misura



Category: Captain America (Movies), X-Men: First Class (2011) - Fandom
Genre: Alternate Universe, Crossover, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-03-27
Updated: 2012-03-27
Packaged: 2017-11-23 22:57:27
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,094
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/627434
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/misura/pseuds/misura
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p><i>They find the kid in the middle of a room that makes Bucky want to wipe this whole building off the face of the earth (which happily happens to be the plan anyway).</i> (crossover/AU)</p>
            </blockquote>





	Carry You Home

They find the kid in the middle of a room that makes Bucky want to wipe this whole building off the face of the earth (which happily happens to be the plan anyway) and then find the person responsible for putting it there in the first place and wipe _him_ off the face of the earth, too (fair's fair: Steve's working on it).

He looks like he's nine, maybe ten years old. Stuck in a cage (a _cage_ , for crying out loud! like, what, he might escape if they'd just locked the door?) as if he's some sort of wild animal.

One look at the kid's face tells Bucky that yeah, maybe that description isn't too far off, actually. Not the kid's fault, obviously; God only knows how long he's been here, but it's probably best to tread a bit carefully, make sure not to spook the little fellow.

Steve's shield hits the lock of the cage with a loud bang. Makes Bucky jump. Gets the kid looking at Steve with an expression that's half-wary and half-curious and quite human.

"Anyone's spotted any keys?" Steve sounds only about half the kind of pissed off Bucky feels. It doesn't mean he _isn't_ , of course; just that he's focusing on the job at hand.

Bucky checks the dead guy in the hallway, feeling like a coward for prefering not to further explore the room. There are a lot of drawers.

"No keys on the guard." No people shooting at him either, which is either good news (the place has been evacuated already, in the face of an overwhelmingly superior force) or bad news (they might be walking into an ambush on their way out).

" _Ist er tot?_ " The kid looks at Steve when he asks it. _Is he dead?_

Steve doesn't ask _who?_. "Yes." It doesn't really matter, Bucky supposes; if it's not true yet, it will be soon enough.

"No keys in any of these drawers," Dugan says.

Steve nods and readies his shield for another throw - it's not ideal, but in any contest between vibranium and what-have-you, the what-have-you is going to come out the loser sooner or later.

" _Ist er wirklich tot?_ "

The drawers seem to be trembling a little - not enough for immediate concern, but Bucky figures it might be getting about time to sound the retreat and let the explosives take care of the rest - _their_ explosives, needless to say.

"Let's just get you out of here, all right? My name's Steve - what's yours?"

"Erik." The lock snaps open. " _Meine Nahme ist Erich._ "

_My name is Erik and I can unlock this cage by pointing at it._

"Shoddy German workmanship," Morita says.

"One little love tap from Cap's shield and it's bye-bye." Jones tsks.

 

Captain America's crack team is really no place for a ten-year-old, no matter what that ten-year-old might be able to do, but even so -

"No. No foster home." Steve juts out his chin ever so slightly. It's something he only ever seems to do when arguing with Peggy, and if it's supposed to help him win the argument, Bucky has yet to see it work.

Peggy frowns at Steve. "No?" Unlike Steve's chin jutting, Peggy's frowning always works to take Steve down a notch or two - whether called for or not. It's sort of cute.

"No, ma'am?" Steve tries, with the kind of grin that has melted softer hearts than Peggy's.

"Steve." She stops frowning, at least. "We're going to do what we can to find his family, I promise. Until then, we'll find him a good, loving home." Steve shakes his head, which brings back the frown. "What else do you want me to do?"

Steve coughs a bit. It's pure nerves, Bucky's been told; unlike the rest of them mere mortals, Steve will never so much as catch a cold. "I ah I thought _we_ could take care of him."

Bucky chokes on nothing. Peggy, possibly to her credit, looks only mildly surprised. " 'We', Captain Rogers?"

"The team," Steve says, expression slightly confused. "Honestly, Peggy, I think we can do it. And it's what Erik wants, too."

Actually, what Erik wants is to kill Nazis. And people working for HYDRA. And anyone who wants to put him in a laboratory to be studied. Naturally, that was before Steve (earnestly and firmly) told him that wanting to kill people was not an acceptable life goal, after which Erik declared himself willing to settle for staying with Steve instead.

Bucky hasn't yet figured out if it's because Steve is Steve, or if it's just that Erik is smart enough to figure out that sticking around Steve and the team is his best chance at getting what he really wants.

"For what it's worth, Steve makes a pretty good mom," he tells Peggy.

Steve flushes slightly. Peggy chuckles. "I'm sure he does."

 

"I came pretty close to getting stuck in a lab, too, you know," Steve says, apparently operating under some (mistaken) assumption that Bucky either is able to read minds or has been briefed on the particulars of Steve's life from the moment Bucky left for the front to the moment Steve came and rescued him. "I just got lucky the senator wanted someone to put on a costume and take to the stage."

"Costume looks pretty good on you, too." It's not hard to picture Steve asking people to support their country by buying war bonds. It's a bit tricky to imagine him doing so during a song and dance number, accompanied by dancing girls and a fake Hitler to punch in the face though. Bucky wishes he could've been there, just once. "You didn't tell Peggy your kid can bend metal with his mind."

Given that Peggy's not exactly an idiot and that Steve's a terrible liar, Bucky's a bit surprised.

"It wasn't my secret to share," Steve says. "After the war, he should be free to go back to his family, not stuck in a facility somewhere. If I told Peggy, she'd feel it to be her duty to tell _her_ boss, and then _he_ 'd feel he had to tell someone else, and sooner or later, someone'd make a bad decision."

"So she didn't ask, and you didn't tell."

"Yes, I suppose."

 

They don't teach Erik how to kill people, obviously (although Bucky isn't sure if Erik'd need lessons in that, anyway) but they do teach him how to drive (a car, a jeep or a tank - Dugan claims the difference is negligible, and they're all made of metal, which means Erik can operate them even if his legs aren't quite long enough to read the pedal while keeping his hands on the wheel). They teach him how to defend himself. They teach him how to dance, because (Bucky says pointedly) everyone should know the right steps when called upon by a lady.

 

"It's a train," Steve says. "A big train."

A train they need to board unseen in order to snatch one of its passengers, after which they need to get out again without anyone noticing. Not the most impossible objective Bucky's ever heard, but the list of Things That Could Go Wrong is enough to give him pause, just for a moment.

Of course, once Steve's OKed the plan, that's going to be good enough for Bucky.

"Made of metal," Erik says, as stubborn as Steve has been, once upon a time.

Dernier coughs. "If the plan is to operate covertly, a flying train might not be good, yes?"

Steve could have said 'yes' and ended the discussion there, but apparently, the honest answer is 'no'. "The most important thing is to get Doctor Zola."

"Maybe make a plan for both, see which works best?" Morita shrugs. "If Erik can move the train - well, hard to escape from a train when it's hanging in the air, isn't it?"

"Not exactly a piece of cake to get out of a riding train, either," Falsworth comments.

Jones nods. "Going to have to put it down someplace, too."

" _Ich kann's. Glauben Sie mir,_ " Erik tells Steve, who doesn't look like he doesn't believe Erik is, indeed, able to do what he's offered. And it _would_ be safer, Bucky assumes, to make the train come to them, in a place of their own choosing.

 

It feels a bit awkward, going behind Steve's back to have a quiet word with the good Doctor about how he's come to be here, especially when Bucky walks in to find the guy looking as pale as if he's just seen Death. Which would be a pity, given the number of questions Peggy's superiors want to ask him.

"Drink?" Zola's still alive, so apparently he wasn't involved in whatever was the sick plan behind putting Erik in a cage and making him watch his mother get shot. Doesn't make him a good guy or anyone Bucky'd be happy to waste some good liquor on.

Zola shakes his head. Bucky sits down. Zola eyes him warily, like a rabbit watching a wolf or a human keeping an eye on a dog he suspects to be rabid, perhaps.

Threatening people isn't exactly new to Bucky; it's just that usually, the people he threatens look a bit more threatening themselves and/or have just been beating up Steve.

"If you're here about the boy, you're the fourth one tonight," Zola says. "I believe I've gotten the message."

"Oh." Well, yes, Dugan would probably think of it, too. And he'd tell Jones, who'd tell Dernier (in French, likely as not), who might tell Morita, who wouldn't tell Bucky, because they all know he's Steve's oldest and best friend, and Steve doesn't approve of threatening prisoners. "Good."

There doesn't really seem a reason not to leave after that and get some sleep, so Bucky does. On his way out, he meets Morita, trying to look innocent and 'just happening to pass by'.

 

And then everything goes to hell in a hurry, just when it looked like things were going to end well, and Bucky finds himself in a small airplane flewn by Howard Stark, genius, accompanied by Erik Lehnsherr, _Wunderkind_ (or whatever the word for someone like Erik is). It takes Stark a whole five minutes to ask what Erik's doing there, which is as clear a sign as any of how bad things really are.

Still, at least they're _doing_ something, other than waiting by the radio.

"Can you move _this_ plane, too?" Bucky asks. "Make us get there faster?"

Stark looks a bit apprehensive. Erik looks nervous, which means Stark might have good reason.

"Yes," Erik says.

In the end, they almost make it in time to save Steve.

 

"Almost," Peggy echoes, looking like someone who feels getting mad at someone might be just the distraction she needs. "Your plane _fell apart_ in mid-air and you're all lucky to be alive."

"Experimental model," Stark mumbles, staring at his feet. Either the man's a great actor, or he's - well, no, he can't actually be embarrassed about the plane falling apart. That part wasn't his fault, unless you consider it Stark's fault his plane wasn't built to go five times faster than the fastest plane currently known to man. "Terribly sorry, Agent Carter. I take full responsibility."

"Go away," Peggy says. "Just ... go away. Try to stay out of trouble for a few days."

"S'pose we can manage that."

Bucky wonders if he'll ever feel warm again. Steve must be cold, too, wherever he is.

 

[epilogue]

It's crowded and too warm and Erik wonders why he's even here - where by 'here', he's not sure if he means this particular pub, or the general environs of Oxford. He distracts himself for a moment by picking up a bottle cap and turning it into a man-shaped figurine, then a small spoon, then a bottle cap again. Surprisingly, the last bit is the hardest.

Normally, Erik prefers to practice stuff like this in private, but he's bored and nobody's looking anyway.

"That's a very groovy mutation," someone says from behind him, and Erik spins around, to see ... still nobody looking at him. There's some young idiot, chatting up a girl whose eyes are two different colors, talking about mutations as if that's all they're good for.

Erik watches the scene play out while he orders a beer, gets it much quicker than expected and sips it as the young idiot's sister steps in to thoroughly dash whatever hopes he might have had with the girl.

If nothing else, Erik supposes he'll have something entertaining to write home about.


End file.
